This image was taken by the HiRISE camera on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Scientists previously spotted signs of tectonic activity here, including landslides. Scientists are still crossing their fingers that InSight will detect what they refer to as "the Big One." The two largest quakes detected by NASA's InSight appear to have originated in a region of Mars called Cerberus Fossae. It's possible that larger quakes are occurring but have gone undetected. The mantle and core are "the juiciest parts of the apple" when it comes to studying the inner structure of Mars, Bruce Banerdt, InSight principal investigator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a press release. The largest quake was measured at magnitude 4.0, meaning it was not large enough to travel into the planet's lower mantle and core. "Planetary exploration is not as easy as pie!" Spohn wrote Tuesday in the logbook.ĭistributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.Scientists said the vast majority of the trembles were likely marsquakes, rather than data noise created by wind or other environmental factors. InSight's team members still hope that will happen, but they know better than to take anything for granted. This information will help scientists gauge the planet's heat flow more accurately if and when the mole is finally deployed as planned. It will also track changes in surface temperature when the moon Phobos passes overhead this week, eclipsing the sun and casting a shadow over the rusty surface. The mole will measure how quickly a pulse of heat spreads through the Martian soil. The probe itself still works fine, and researchers will take advantage of the break to collect the first round of data. Smrekar said team members are currently waiting to receive images and other data from the lander that will help them "better assess the situation." "Keep your fingers crossed!" Spohn, a researcher with the German Aerospace Center in Berlin, wrote on the blog before a second bout of hammering began Saturday.īut that attempt yielded little success, and the HP3 team decided to put the operation on hold while they brainstorm other strategies and test them out at JPL. Engineers had hoped that would be happening now. Tests conducted at JPL suggest the probe should be able to work its way around small rocks and through layers of pebbles. "We can't truly see into the subsurface," Sue Smrekar of JPL, the deputy principal investigator for the heat probe and the overall mission, said back in November before InSight landed. However, they were aware that something like this was a possibility. Scientists picked InSight's landing spot because it appeared to be soft and sandy. The most likely explanation for the holdup is that the probe has hit a buried boulder or a layer of gravel. "We are a bit worried," Spohn wrote in the logbook, "but tend to be optimistic." Mission scientists estimate the probe has reached a depth of about a foot, meaning one end of the 16-inch mole is still sticking out of the ground. In addition, it is now pitched to one side, leaning about 15 degrees off vertical. The mole continued hammering for four more hours, but it couldn't go much deeper. The mole punched out of its housing and into the Martian soil, making quick progress during the first five minutes. Its mission is to measure heat escaping from Mars' interior, which will give scientists clues about the planet's composition and history.Įngineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, Calif., first tried last week to fire up the probe-nicknamed "the mole-but the command failed to reach the Mars Odyssey orbiter, which was supposed to pass it on to InSight in a game of interplanetary telephone.Īfter two days of delay, the boring got underway last Thursday. The Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package, or HP3, was successfully deployed by the lander's mechanical arm on Feb. "The team has therefore decided to pause the hammering for about two weeks to allow the situation to be analyzed more closely and jointly come up with strategies for overcoming the obstacle," Tilman Spohn, the principal investigator for the heat probe, wrote Tuesday in the mission logbook. The instrument, which was designed to hammer itself 16 feet underground, encountered some kind of resistance over the weekend and hasn't made progress since.
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